this might seem like a DUH for a lot of people but i wanted to warn people of my bonehead move last year. bought two blocks of dry ice on saturday since my local place was closed on sunday. put them in my refrigerator's freezer overnight and in the morning POOF half of it was gone! apparently dry ice is much colder than the temperature of my freezer. keep yours in a cooler the whole time!

Just finished reading this entire thread, plans forming for ice cream consumption late in the week :D

I have one remaining question, however. There are lots of comments about food becoming carbonated. Is there any way to avoid this? We'll only have frozen meat and ice cream in the dry ice cooler--and no dry ice in the food/drink cooler so contamination would hypothetically be somewhat limited--but I'd rather not have fizzy steak.

There are lots of places around Reno that will be selling dry ice strickly for the BM crowd. I called around to a few places and the price I got was around $1.69 per pound for a 10lb. block. I also called local to my house here on the east coast and got a price of $2.00 per pound for a 10lb. block. I am offering this info so you all can get a feel for what you should be paying and what is a fair price for dry ice. Merchants sometimes gouge if they think they have a captive market.

Caution: Keep Dry Ice away from children if they cannot be closely supervised at all times.

HANDLING
Dry Ice temperature is extremely cold at -109.3Â°F or -78.5Â°C. Always handle Dry Ice with care and wear protective cloth or leather gloves whenever touching it. An oven mitt or towel will work. If touched briefly it is harmless, but prolonged contact with the skin will freeze cells and cause injury similar to a burn.

STORAGE
Store Dry Ice in an insulated container. The thicker the insulation, the slower it will sublimate. Do not store Dry Ice in a completely airtight container. The sublimation of Dry Ice to Carbon Dioxide gas will cause any airtight container to expand or possibly explode. Keep proper air ventilation wherever Dry Ice is stored. Do not store Dry Ice in unventilated rooms, cellars, autos or boat holds. The sublimated Carbon Dioxide gas will sink to low areas and replace oxygenated air. This could cause suffocation if breathed exclusively. Do not store Dry Ice in a refrigerator freezer. The extremely cold temperature will cause your thermostat to turn off the freezer. It will keep everything frozen in the freezer but it will be used up at a faster rate. It is the perfect thing if your refrigerator breaks down in an emergency. There are also Commercial Storage Containers available.

VENTILATION
Normal air is 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen and only 0.035% Carbon Dioxide. If the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air rises above 0.5%, carbon dioxide can become dangerous. Smaller concentrations can cause quicker breathing but is otherwise not harmful. If Dry Ice has been in a closed auto, van, room, or walk-in, for more than 10 minutes, open doors and allow adequate ventilation before entering. Leave area containing Dry Ice if you start to pant and breath quickly or your fingernails or lips start to turn blue. This is the sign that you have breathed in too much CO2 and not enough oxygen. Dry Ice CO2 is heavier than air and will accumulate in low spaces. Do not enter closed storage areas that have or have had stored Dry Ice before airing out completely.

PICK-UP TIME AND TRANSPORTING
Plan to pick up the Dry Ice as close to the time it is needed as possible. It sublimates at 10%, or 5 to 10 pounds every 24 hours, whichever is greater. Carry it in a well-insulated container such as an ice chest. If it is transported inside a car or van for more than 15 minutes make sure there is fresh air. After 15 minutes with Dry Ice only in its paper bag in the passenger seat next to me, I started to breathe faster and faster as though I were running a race. I couldn't figure out why I was so out of breath until I saw the car air system was set in the re-circulated position, not fresh outside air.

BURN TREATMENT
Treat Dry Ice burns the same as a regular heat burns. See a doctor if the skin blisters or comes off. Otherwise if only red it will heal in time as any other burn. Apply antibiotic ointment to prevent infection and bandage only if the burned skin area needs to be protected.

one other safety note. Saw a guy at a party one time eating the dry ice that was left over in the punch bowl. He said it was kind of like a boozey slushy...shortly after he threw up all over the kitchen. So don't eat it

Shambala wrote:There are lots of places around Reno that will be selling dry ice strickly for the BM crowd. I called around to a few places and the price I got was around $1.69 per pound for a 10lb. block. I also called local to my house here on the east coast and got a price of $2.00 per pound for a 10lb. block. I am offering this info so you all can get a feel for what you should be paying and what is a fair price for dry ice. Merchants sometimes gouge if they think they have a captive market.

good advice. thing is make sure you're in Reno at an early time cause last year around 8 PM on Sunday night there wasnt dry ice anywhere in the city.

If you wrap dry ice in thick newspaper before dropping it in the cooler it will take longer to sublimate. Wrapping it in layers of newspaper and foil (newspaper against the DI) works better. Wrap it tightly, and remember that the paper or foil WILL be as cold as the dry ice.

For the above, tie it with string - tape (including duct) will fail under the extreme cold and high co2 concentrations.

Also keep all frozen foods in ziplock baggies to prevent carbonation of the food. I double bag mine..

IF you can freeze food in a cooler with dry ice BEFORE packing it in your dry-ice freezer with (fresh) dry ice it will stay frozen longer.

Do NOT use an expensive kitchen knife to break up dry ice, as the extreme cold will shatter the blade. Use a hatchet or axe instead. (Turned a 10" henkels chefs knife into a cleaver one year this way.)

Putting dry ice in water will accelerate sublimation. Think about this before putting it in your wet ice chest to keep your ice frozen. (Wet ice + water!!)

Put your dry ice cooler on sticks or a pallet off the playa surface to make an air gap - the cold will damage the playa surface, and you will lose cold through the bottom of the cooler into the playa surface.

Finally - have a separate cooler for STORING dry ice and as your playa freezer. Every time you open your cooler DI will sublimate - you can stretch DI by only opening the DI cooler when you need to recharge the playa freezer cooler. (I've stretched 100# 12+ days doing this...)

Thanks for the tips, BBS! I will put all my food in ziplocks so I'm not serving carbonated meat *shudder*

Someone, somewhere in the thread said they wrapped their DI in insulated foam w/ mylar on one side, then wrapped all THAT in duct tape. Any experience with that? Most people seem to be happy with newspaper and foil, but this sounded promising.

As long as you keep the DI from sublimating too fast, and as long as the wrapper can handle the low temps, you should be fine. If the foam/mylar works for them, cool! Most important IMO is a GOOD cooler - I got one of those "7 day" ones, big ol' thing, and it's paid for itself in spades. cheaper coolers will cost you your precious DI supply. Took me many years of experimentation to come up with what works for me (I've been doing this longer than I've been a burner!)... I wrapped it all in a plastic trash bag once, I may try that again but using a compactor bag instead - the trash bag was too thin...

Also remember that when you recharge your freezer cooler you have to have a way to get your DI out of your heavy duty wrapper in main storage and then re-wrap it...

And if you have a yellow jacket or fire ant nest in the yard, placing a block of dry ice on the entrance to the nest in the ground will get rid of them. The cold keeps them docile and the CO2 eventually displaces the oxygen in the nest and kills them.

Homiesinheaven wrote:good advice. thing is make sure you're in Reno at an early time cause last year around 8 PM on Sunday night there wasnt dry ice anywhere in the city.

Crystal Ice on 4th St about a block or so west of Keystone Ave is selling dry ice for .99 per lb as of yeaterday. Unfortunatley they close at 4pm...but last year I was playa bound after work on Wedensday. I get off at 4:30 and they were still open I gave the fellow on the dock a fiver for helping me.
They are burner friendly and supply ice for the entire event.

My cats are cuter than your grandkids!"We in Arizona (and the rest of the United States) have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act.""Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem."

geekster wrote:The Albertson's market at 525 Keystone also carries dry ice but depending on when you get there, they might be out of it.

Just a technicallity....the Albertson is now called Serv Mart

My cats are cuter than your grandkids!"We in Arizona (and the rest of the United States) have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act.""Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem."

We'll be coming from WI to BRC, a 3-day trek. We've retooled our food plan to not include anything that has to be kept cold, so we're only talking about cooling beverages & Muscle Milk for breakfast (tastes better cold, but doesn't HAVE to be).

My preference would be not to freeze gallon jugs & haul them across the country, but since our coolers only hold a total of about 15 gallon jugs, we could do that--get dry ice here in WI and then replenish in Fernley. We'll have two much-smaller coolers to transfer frozen jugs into.

Or...how well would it work to get WARM jugs of water in Fernley--and dry ice? Would the dry ice sublimate so fast cooling off the jugs that they wouldn't stay frozen for the 6 days we'll be there? Should we NOT tape the coolers shut (will they explode?)

: I'd agree with everything Bay Bridge Sue said except:
1) Using foil. Aluminum is a terrible heat insulator; it has very high thermal conductivity; it's worse than nothing.
2) Food in a cooler with dry ice won't get carbonated. See my 3 posts on page 8.

I just called Reno's Crystal Ice and they will sell their .99 cent dry ice in 1-lb blocks, though they suggest larger ones. No need to get huge blocks to get a good price. In years past, I paid way more at a Reno supermarket ($4/lb?)

I'm doing the dry ice thing this year. I have done it before when i go camping. If you leave the block alone and not chip it, it will last a lot longer. 2-3 lb block, 3 day camping trip and the block is still good! I don't know about a week though... Hmm.... 5lb block i'm guessing. Lose a Pound a day?

FACTS:':!:' Dry Ice is 114Â° below zero or 146Â° colder than water ice.

':!:' The only way to regulate the internal temperature is to insulate the dry ice.
Wrapping it in several layers of cloth is one method.

For WA residents, I suggest the AirGas facility in Kent. They are only open until 3pm on Friday though, and closed Saturdays. They quoted me $1.04/lb for dry ice. Most stores stocking dry ice in the area sell for 1.99/lb.

For Seattle people, there is a place called Allied Ice (in Fremont or Ballard) where the dry ice is $1.25/lb and comes in 3-5 lb blocks. I have never used them before, but the reviews sound like it's a local business, which is cool.